If anyone is in Sydney town tomorrow morning keep an eye out for HMAS SYDNEY (FFG-03). She will enter Sydney for the very last time tomorrow morning and will enter the heads at around 8am. She will be flying her paying off pennant (probably supported by weather balloons as it will be her length plus an extra length for every year of service (used to be 1 foot per year) and she has been around for 32 years. A normal commissioning pennant is about 1m in length.

SYDNEY commissioned in the US on the 29th of January 1983 and I still remember the day she arrived in her namesake city where she berthed at the old OPT near the Opera House at Circular Quay. She relieved us (when I was on ADELAIDE) in the Persian Gulf in December 1990 which allowed us to head home.

I am sure there will be many a tear in the old sailors eyes as they come alongside for the very last time tomorrow morning to the sound of the Fleet Band, Maritime Commander, flypast of Navy Helos and media. It will probably be shown live on TV (ABC 24 or Sunrise on 7).

This is sad! She looked great at the IFR in 2013! This reminds me of HMAS Canberra's last visit to Adelaide before her decommissioning. For her age Canberra looked fantastic and one would think she could have gone for another 20 years! Russ do you know why she's paying off so early? When Sydney AWD is still some time off yet. Thank you too all of Sydney's crew past and present. Scott

Sydney was the first of the FFGs to go through the FFG UP-grade and I have been told that they made some significant mistakes during the refit, mostly related to the bow-mounted VLS system.

That was the reason why Navy delayed accepting her back into service for so long following the upgrade, there was some talk that the installation had adversely affected her structural integrity and thus impacted her service life. She was a year late in being accepted back into service.

That said, she had originally been slated to retire in 2013, but on her original retirement date Sydney was operating as part of the US Navy's George Washington Carrier group, fully integrated in as part of the group for a period of three months. Apparently she performed every task set to the group commander's satisfaction and was as much an integral part of the task force's screen as any US warship, receiving a US Navy 'Bravo Zulu' at the completion of the deployment.

That is 3 of the 6 gone. The FFG7's coped a lot of criticism at the beginning, but they proved themselves time and time again, they were one of the best buys we ever made.

Bruce what you will probably find is that Sydney is being retired 12 or 18months before Hobart is expected to set sail, long before the ship sails, electricians and marine engineers will start going through a lot of courses and certifications for the new systems, Hobart's new crew have to come from somewhere.